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Poor mental health is an issue for many of our readers. That fact is underscored by the response to a tweet sent by @NatureNews earlier this week, which highlighted that rates of depression and anxiety reported by postgraduate students are six times higher than in the general population (T. M. Evans et al. Nature Biotechnol. 36, 282–284; 2018), and asked what should be done to help. The figures are a shock, but it was the reaction that blew us away: more than 1,200 retweets and around 170 replies.
“This is not one dimensional problem. Financial burden, hostile academia, red tape, tough job market, no proper career guidance. Take your pick,” read one. “Maybe being told day in, day out that the work you spend 10+ hrs a day, 6–7 days a week on isn’t good enough,” said another.
The feedback emphasizes something that Nature has highlighted often in recent years: there is a problem among young scientists. Too many have mental-health difficulties, and too many say that the demands of the role are partly to blame. Neither issue gets the attention it deserves. “I’d love to see some of the comments under this thread published,” wrote one responder. “There needs to be real conversation about this, not just observation.”
We agree — which is why we are publishing some of the responses. (You can read the full thread here.)
(Score: 0, Troll) by VLM on Monday April 02 2018, @02:25PM (1 child)
Its a problem but not the only problem. Doesn't affect employees and strivers in the Democratic Party apparatus, for example.
Here's an example of conflict:
Publish or perish. Papers are evaluated blind such that scientific quality is all that matters.
Hiring to get into a position of publish or perish is base primarily on demographic membership, race, politics, and currently trendy qualities are in historical opposition to scientific quality. This also fosters impostor syndrome, because if you're hired because you're not a white male, and you know thats the only reason you got hired, you aren't going to be too confident about doing the job (and rightly so).
So if you can publish a paper good enough to keep the job or get a promotion, you're probably the wrong race or gender to get hired in the first place, so the human pain both inside and outside the system will be very high. Its like selecting members of a basketball team by some criteria other than experience, athleticism, and height, then wondering why the team is highly stressed when they often fail.
Imagine an alternative universe where we selected Arabic language professors primarily based on whiteness of skin, whitest least freckled guy wins. I'd get hired, then having no experience with Arabic I'd have quite a stressful employment.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 03 2018, @12:06AM
You're insane and such this GS occur more often in the private sector with people lying on their résumés. You like to overly complain about one aspect of life while totally ignoring the other problems. This makes you an asshole.